Rubik’s Cube for the blind

Check out this Rubik’s Cube for the blind. The idea didn’t start off as an accessibility hack, but instead as a way for [Brian Doom] to figure out where the face of each cube goes when manipulating the puzzle. It gave him tactile feedback and his ability to use it in dim lighting was when it dawned on him that this could be useful to others.

Now when we first thought of a puzzle for the blind the term ‘Braille’ immediately jumped to mind. But this doesn’t use it. That’s great, because not all visually impaired people can understand Braille. Instead, this uses dimension and texture to identify each of the puzzle faces. There are mushroom-shaped knobs, Phillips screws, adhesive rubber bumpers, raised text label maker labels, and a few other items that go along with each color. This doesn’t prevent those with sight from playing either. It’s something of one Rubik’s cube for all. Well, all except for the robots made to solve a stock cube.

Anything can be a weapon – teach your children well (so they can create a weapon when needed :^).

Seriously: I taught my son proper knife handling when he was 4. Too many kids are too insulated from the real world. A few scars and bang-ups are going to teach them what to do and not do. They need room to make reasonable mistakes.

Otherwise, they will never learn how to use tools (hint: *teach* them), and become makers.

A friend made one of these with a dymo labeler in th early 80’s because he was getting bored and wanted to pretend he was blind. The labels worked fine.

My friend’s dad was blind and had a rubik’s cube that had some sort of thick paint on the squares in different shapes. I think that it must have been a puff paint or something like that from the craft store. It obviously worked for him because I would often jumble the cube when I saw it and then next time I came by, it would be solved again.

Pretty sure Braille tiles have existed for a while. As for people who can’t read Braille, why would that be an issue? Aside from the fact you can learn basic Braille characters in an afternoon, most people can tell the difference between 1 dot and 2 etc not even needing proper Braille!

That being said the hack looks well enough executed and fair play to whoever did it. For a whole world of rubik’s cube hacks check out Twistypuzzles.com/forum

My sister got me one as a present a while back, after showing her a video and thinking it was awesome. Eventually I wondered if I could do it with my eyes closed… takes a fair while, I think my best was somewhere around the 5min mark. Definitely not as easy to feel as this one would be though :P